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The rabbits are coming.Actually,
make that rabbit singular, supersize it to seven metres
and crown it with gold-tipped antelope horns.
Melbourne sculptor Emily Floyd’s giant jackalope
makes an arresting faux-naïf statement in the
forecourt at Willow Creek vineyard, the first sign
that the changes afoot at this boutique winery are
profound indeed.
The horned jackrabbit of North American
cowpoke myth has lent its name, along with its
shape-shifting personality, to Jackalope, an ambitious
$40 million hotel three years in the making, and
opened last month on the Mornington Peninsula,
about an hour’s drive from Melbourne.
For dedicated followers of hotel fashion, as well
as those who merely dabble in five-star comfort,
Jackalope is more than a welcome answer to the
wealthy wine region’s dearth of good accommodation
options. It’s a game-changer, the kind of place that
might beget a reputation as a destination in itself.
Forty-six guestrooms, a bistro, wine bar and
restaurant are the bare bones of the Jackalope tale,
not the sum of its parts.
It’s a hotel with a rare sense of fun and artistic
adventure, something the brains behind MONA might
dream up, if they ever get around to building their
long-touted hotel. Jackalope’s guiding theme is
alchemy – specifically, the alchemy of winemaking,
although the breadth of the topic gives art-obsessed
owner Louis Li plenty of wiggle room on the conceptual
elements. They range from the neon alchemical
symbols lending an eerie David Lynchian feel to
the hallways to the 10,000 sepia-toned light bulbs
suspended in glorious LED-powered animation on
the restaurant Doot Doot Doot’s ceiling, imitating the
fermentation process.
Jackalope is the first venture for Chinese-born Li,
who arrived in Melbourne 10 years ago to study film
and business at RMIT, but it’s safe to say he knows
hotels. In the past decade his family has shifted its
focus from property development to tourism; it now
operates seven hotels in China’s Yunnan province in
partnership with Hyatt, Banyan Tree and Accor.
But to this 29-year-old globetrotting aesthete,
luxury can get boring. “When I’m travelling around
the world the formula for luxury is starting to be
a common theme,” he says. “I always think luxury
should be identified by rarity, so the idea was, why
don’t we go for something so rare it only exists in
legend to be the name of the hotel?” Li came acrossa jackalope (a statue, that is) in a Berlin antique store.
He sees it as the perfect inspiration for his “storytelling
luxury leisure brand”.
Jackalope is the product of a grand vision seasoned
with practicality. A crucial factor in the Li family’s
decision to buy the 11-hectare Willow Creek vineyard
for $9.5 million in 2013 was that the property
already had a hotel permit. The architectural design,
by Melbourne-based Carr Design, is fresh and
sympathetic to the site. The property’s original 1876
red-brick farmhouse sits beside the understated
modern two-storey black-clad structure. The hotel’s
forecourt – management prefers the term “piazza”- with that giant jackalope centrestage is flanked by
guestrooms, and the original red-brick Willow Creek
barrel room, which now houses the wine room, cellar
door and a 90-seat bistro named Rare Hare. Across
the way, facing the vines, is an infinity pool lined with
black tiles so it appears as deep and mysterious as a
river. Next to it is a bijou architectural curio known as
the Geode, a space that can be used for private dining
for six, or as a massage room. It would be only mildly
surprising forGrand Designs’ Kevin McCloud to
appear muttering about the seamless amalgamation
of old and new.
“The Mornington Peninsula is crying out for a place
like this,” says Tracy Atherton, who was headhunted
by Li as general manager of what he envisages will be
a collection of Jackalope hotels. She has a decade of
management experience with the luxury Aman group
and more recently was the founding general manager
of Canberra’s game-changing Hotel Hotel. “There’s
really nothing to this scale,” she says, “and the
merging of art and hospitality creates something
utterly unique.”
Ah yes, the art. Design fans will have a field day
in Jackalope’s public spaces. In the bar known as
Flaggerdoot (the collective noun for jackalopes), where
guests are taken for a glass of wine while their car is
parked and luggage taken to their room, a Rick Owens
Stag Bench incorporating a moose antler vies for
attention with two gold Edra Leather Works chairs
and geometric Fabio Ongarato neon lights snaking
across the ceiling. Moooi chairs with crazy coathook
extensions add to the dark and slightly surreal
PHOTOGRAPHY JULIAN KINGMA ambience of the 80-seat Doot Doot Doot, while>
Quantum leap
With the opening of Jackalope, a luxe hotel with a sense of fun and artistic adventure,
the Mornington Peninsula has acquired a new level of staying power, writesLarissa Dubecki.FEATURE
ELECTRIC BLUE
Opposite: neon
alchemical symbols
and astrological
constellations light the
hallways at Jackalope.“To walk into the Jackalope is walking into my
mind. I want it to provide anescape from reality.”